Limiting skill points

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by MaryAnn

My concern was that this character had more than nine thousand points, many of them on skills, and she kept winning at a rate of 288 points a year (now she gains 18).

Why does she get any points per year at all? If all she does is spend every possible second doing intensive training, then she's never going to actually do anything that makes her a character.

I think you are completely misunderstanding or abusing the learning guidelines. They are available *IF* you want a character to spend some time learning to get skills up. It's not mandatory. You don't have to say, "x hours have passed, so the character must have gained points".

Honestly, what even is the point of a 9,000 point character? 1,000? 2,000 even? Sure, playable, exist, no drama. Over that, and only having skills at 21...I simply do not understand what you are doing or trying to do. Of course, that's fine, it doesn't have to be understanable to me :-) But, really, I think there's something terribly wrong in your approach to the whole thing. I'd love to know what game you are actually running or playing.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Farmer

If all she does is spend every possible second doing intensive training, .

.......one starts to wonder where this training comes from.

Then you wonder how anyone can stand continuous Intensive Training. Even a quick review of the rules on p.5 of Back to School reveals that after a month of Intensive Training a HT roll is required to go on and with every month that penalty gets worse by -1. Crit failures break the Intensive Training and no Skill pts are acquired for that month. There will be healing time required for phsyical injuries as well.

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

.......one starts to wonder where this training comes from.

Then you wonder how anyone can stand continuous Intensive Training. Even a quick review of the rules on p.5 of Back to School reveals that after a month of Intensive Training a HT roll is required to go on and with every month that penalty gets worse by -1. Crit failures break the Intensive Training and no Skill pts are acquired for that month. There will be healing time required for phsyical injuries as well.

This is why I'm wondering. I'm thinking I'm genuinely missing a critical point here with the whole exercise. And, again, it's not for me or any of us to say how someone else runs or plays a game and I suspect it comes across that way at times, but that's not my intent. I'm really curious, and somewhat concerned that there's a misunderstanding somewhere that might be adversely affecting how someone is making use of the rules and making their life complex when it's not needed.

[Emerikol]

As I intimated above, I agree that limits don't fit every campaign because genres vary. The danger I think is that without some guidance it would be easy for a game to get derailed. You have a bunch of optimizers and no limits and you'll have a campaign in the ditch soon enough.

I definitely think for a typical fantasy campaign you need limits. For a typical action campaign or a typical historical you need limits. For a supers, maybe not.

The limits might vary so I see the wisdom of not making one size fit everything.

For NPCs in a typical fantasy world, I like the idea of Age x 2 for skill points. Obviously, there will be exceptions. I'd randomly generate stats. Still deciding on what would work best in that area. I'm thinking take 5d6 and keep the middle 3 dice for each stat.

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by Emerikol

For NPCs in a typical fantasy world, I like the idea of Age x 2 for skill points. Obviously, there will be exceptions. I'd randomly generate stats. Still deciding on what would work best in that area. I'm thinking take 5d6 and keep the middle 3 dice for each stat.

I've spent this evening making some NPCs for tomorrow fantasy game that I'm running. Nothing random. I just make them have the abilities, skills, HP, etc. that I need them to have for the encounter.

Big, Proper Noun NPCs, I typically build like a PC and the point tally is a guide, but I still make them be what I need them to be, but I watch their relative power by monitoring point totals. This is for deeper, broader, recurring NPCs.

It's fun :-)

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Emerikol

I'd randomly generate stats. Still deciding on what would work best in that area. I'm thinking take 5d6 and keep the middle 3 dice for each stat.

It's a tangent, but here's a comparison of straight 3d6, your suggestion (named "Emerikol's"), and 4d6 drop lowest (named "ToG Style"). Note your suggestion is only very slightly different from straight 3d6 (you can really see this if you click on the "Graph" tab), with a Standard Deviation of 2.89 instead of 2.96.

[Emerikol]

Originally Posted by Varyon

It's a tangent, but here's a comparison of straight 3d6, your suggestion (named "Emerikol's"), and 4d6 drop lowest (named "ToG Style"). Note your suggestion is only very slightly different from straight 3d6 (you can really see this if you click on the "Graph" tab), with a Standard Deviation of 2.89 instead of 2.96.

Yeah I was just trying to avoid the super low and super high rolls a bit more. Get more people with scores in the middle.

4d6 moves the midpoint up whereas 5d6 keeps it the same. I can use anydice.com to come up with the approach whatever it is.

This might be a better die roll
3d{1,2,2,3,3,4,4,5,5,6}

[Emerikol]

Originally Posted by Farmer

You've got 2,090pts in skills but only 18 in advantages (which seem under priced).

2000 points? How long has she been playing? May campaigns would tend to max out at 1200 pts and that would take a long time to get like 5 years.

[Kallatari]

One thing I forgot to mention in my previous post, although in my games I do use caps in attributes and relative skill levels (e.g., attribute +X) to help establish the style/feel of the campaign, it's never really been an issue. Out of the decade or so of doing this, I've only had one character hit the maximums - and they had a valid in-character reason for doing so.

The reason is that my campaign caps are not established just by me as the GM, but by me and the players as we decide on the campaign parameters and what we want to play. It's a group decision as to whether we are gritty, realistic, cinematic, superheroic, etc., and a group decision as to what exactly that decision means with respect to character trait caps and availability of traits. Because every player was a part of the "we want this" decision, they all make their characters accordingly. They use the caps as a guideline as to what would be pushing the limit, but have always built below the caps because that's what was intended for the campaign.

All this to say, I'm not sure why you need a complicated formula to determine your limits that are dependent on other traits. You're much better off just picking - preferably in collaboration with your players - an arbitrary limit that just feels right for your setting.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Emerikol

2000 points? .

This is another thing. I built a 1500 pt character once and he only had 100 pts in conventional skills. He did have another 500 pts in spells.